


On Stendhal

by Aamalysstuff



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Art History, Character Turned Into Vampire, Established Relationship, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26423950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aamalysstuff/pseuds/Aamalysstuff
Summary: Arthur remembered seeing the Primavera when it was unfinished egg tempera on a wooden panel that Sandro Botticelli was working on, he remembered seeing in the Villa di Castello in 1670, when Botticelli was long dead. He saw it with Francis once when they had visited Italy together in 1898, and then again in 1934 when he had been alone, angry and smelling the scent of upcoming war brewing in the air.
Relationships: England/France (Hetalia)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	On Stendhal

Contrary to absolutely no one’s belief, Arthur Kirkland had not been born with a talent for witchcraft.

Truth be told, Arthur Kirkland had been born with absolutely no talent whatsoever, unless one counted his capacity to bring misfortune with him wherever he passed.

See here – his mother had been young and beautiful and healthy when she gave birth to his older brothers. She had brought three sons into the world, all within a year of each other, all of them big and strong. Good births too, easy and she recovered quickly, in years in which the harvest had been bountiful, the weather mild and the sun bright.

The Kirkland boys had grown quickly, all of them giving signs from an early age that they would be fine young men. His mother and his father had full hearts, chests bursting with pride whenever they looked upon their boys, secure in the knowledge that their family would prosper.

Years passed, one, two, five, then seven. His mother grew older, but she was still beautiful and his father loved her very much. While her skin lost its youthfulness and her laugh became more subdued, his father loved her. His boys were his pride and joy, but he would still look upon his wife and feel his heart beating faster, for if there ever was a love that was written in stars, theirs was it.

And then his mother became pregnant again.

And while she had been pregnant with his brothers, it had seemed like the babes inside her made her shine brighter, shared their health and their robust nature with her as well. The same could not be said in Arthur’s case.

If his brothers had given her health and shared warmth and life with her, Arthur seemed to suck every little bit of her that was good. She spent her time exhausted and drained, pale and unable to eat and all the while Arthur was draining what little strength she had left. His father had been sick with worry – never before had he seen his beautiful wife in such a state of constant fatigue and sickness, the circles under her eyes dark bruises and her naturally rosy complexion sallow and dull.

He was afraid for his wife and his boys constantly asked about their mother, why was she sleeping again, why was she breathing so badly, why was it so hard for her to talk, what was happening. Without meaning to, the thing that had started out as a blessing had quickly become a curse, a child that should have been a joy to bring into the world was seen as a plague that was destroying his wife from within.

The seasons had not been kind with them either. It was a time of a great draught like never before, and when the rains finally came back, they came back with a vengeance. It was a horrible storm with winds so terrible that they felled great trees and tore them from the Earth, and it lasted for days and days on end.

That’s when Arthur Kirkland had been born – during a great and wretched storm that tore apart the Earth, made the rivers overflow. That night, the winds picked up everything, they stole the roofs off huts and the roots of the trees from their homes and worst, most unforgiveable of all, that night the winds stole his mother’s soul from her body as well, the winds stole her away and left a hallow carcass in their aftermath.

Arthur Kirkland had been born, yes, but his mother was laying in pool blood on her deathbed, and there was no joy to be had. What use did his father have of another son when it was at the expense of his most beloved wife?

To add insult to injury, the boy was nothing like his brothers had been, Arthur wailed and screamed like a hell spawn and nothing could make him stop. It seemed like the child was always hungry, always ravenously hungry and no amount of milk could make him settle, nothing could appease his insatiable hunger.

In the meantime, strange things started happening in their village, or more precisely – in the woods that surrounded them. People could always get lost or hurt in the woods, but never like this, never so often. And some of them didn’t come back, but others returned. They stumbled back into their homes with hollow eyes and slack jaws, raving mad men that spoke of demons and witches and destruction. People became fearful. They stopped venturing into the woods, unless they went in together in big groups, never let sundown catch then outside.

Misfortune and ruin in the Kirkland family, but misfortune, fear and isolation settled over their whole village, unhappiness hanging like a cloud. Mad men in the streets raved about teeth and blood and magic, about the pain and pleasure of rapture, about beauty beyond understanding. Other’s that returned from the woods were like ghosts, refusing to talk, refusing to move, refusing to eat.

 _What was the point in eating_ , one said on his deathbed, _when nothing can ever hope to sate this hunger in my soul?_

_***_

Arthur was sure that he had memories of his father and his brothers at some point. He must have had them, must have had memories of the village he was born in. Yes, of course he had them, but he traded them away.

For what, that was the question that might come to mind. What would be so important that a man would be willing to trade his memories for? His childhood, his family and the places of his youth, what was worth so much?

Knowledge and power, of course, those came up all the time. If you would ask Arthur about it – no one really asked anymore, because few people knew there was such a trade to ask about – but if you would ask, nonetheless, Arthur would answer – knowledge and power, and a place beyond time, beyond death.

Life that went on beyond the passing of years, above sickness and death _. I gave them away for power and for time, for choices_. It was a fair trade. You give years that you lived, but you get forever in return.

So he did.

So there were holes in his memories. Some holes were there because he was _old,_ Arthur was very, very old and he simply choose to forget some things. There’s only so much space that he had in his head, after all, only a limited amount of people, places, feelings.

Ordinary humans forget as well, vampires like Arthur had centuries worth of memories – he was bound to lose some of them to the passage of time.

But there were still memories that stood out. 

***

There was this memory that Arthur had, this memory that stood out – bright, burning and sharp – inside his mind.

He was walking down Ponte alle Grazie when it came back to him. He was walking, through the hustle and bustle of people and bloody _fascists_ with their black shirts and below them, underneath the stone bridge that was old, old, old but still younger than Arthur – the Arno was roaring and raging. He stopped in his tracks and looked down, looked at the dark, murky waters that were the Arno – but they could have been the Thames or they could have been the Seine.

You see one dark, murky, _angry_ river, you see them all. It’s all just water and they’re all just bridges, and the water keeps doing the same thing throughout the centuries. It washes away the shit and the dirt and dead bodies, it swells and floods and brings cholera and brings in ships in ports. Ships that carry the plague.

Yeah, water. It’s all the same, serves the same purpose. 

But that’s the thing about memory.

Arthur knew how the Thames ebbed and flowed, he knew how the Seine ran – but memories were tricky, rotten liars, treacherous bastards that made ugly things beautiful. If you let enough time pass, you can look back and even the ugliest things can morph into beauty and bring the aching sweetness of longing.

Francis loved mister Stendhal. Arthur had been all around indifferent to the man.

Staring into the ripples of the Arno, letting the memory of the sensation of water wash over him, letting the reality of people and fascists melt away, Arthur could be honest with himself and admit that maybe he might have liked Stendhal if only Francis had been less vocal about loving him. There might have been a great revelation about himself hidden in that statement – but Arthur was old, bored and tired. All the great revelations about himself, he had them already.

But Stendhal.

Bloody Stendhal.

He remembered reading that one study of his, _On Love._ Francis didn’t give it to him, Arthur just picked it up one day and read it, and it…stuck with him.

It was such a simple concept the man detailed over there – you take a dead branch and you throw it in the salt mines. You leave it there for a while, until salt starts crystalizing, until you go back one day and there’s your dead branch. It’s shining and dazzling and beautiful, an infinity of little salt crystals like diamonds. And you can take it out and marvel at it, how beautiful it is, how glorious. You can sell it as being precious, you can keep it displayed in your home.

But it’s a dead branch, it’s a dead branch covered in salt, Mister Stendhal, no matter how beautiful time made it seem. It’s worthless, it’s still worthless.

Must always remember that. Don’t let yourself get dazzled by a dead branch covered in crystals, Kirkland.

But….

Sharp, bright and colourful.

He was angry with himself in a way that he hadn’t let himself get angry in years, this useless, helpless anger that he felt like a physical thing, like a pile of lead in his stomach and a searing burn through his insides, and there was nothing to calm it down.

He walked briskly through the Florentine streets, leaving the waters of the Arno behind him. He didn’t know where he wanted to go – he didn’t want to go anywhere, he wanted to get away, but the things he wanted to get away from weren’t around him, weren’t real in the corporeal form.

But still real.

Bright sharp and colorful, the Francis of his memories was more real to him than the stone and concrete of the Palazzo Vecchio with all its Renaissance history.

In his memory, Francis had the rising sun behind him, the fiery glow of early morning rays making him soft around the edges, making him look warm and radiant. Everything else seemed dulled in comparison, less… _less_. Just…less.

Less beautiful, less real, less tangible – Reality had this willy way of turning into wisps of fleeting fancy when confronted with the unmovable constant of Francis Bonnefoy in the life of Arthur Kirkland.

“Do you love me, Arthur?” Francis asked him in his memory, and Arthur remembered how he had scoffed at the question.

“ _No_. Quit being stupid, Francis, get off from there.”

 _There_ had been the ledge of Pont Neuf. The Seine had been just as dark and murky and smelly back then, it was still dark and murky and smelly in his memory, and Francis sitting rather precariously on the ledge of the bridge, looking at Arthur with laughter in his eyes.

“I don’t believe you. Tell me you love me, Arthur.”

“Or what? Did you ever bother to learn how to swim?” Arthur had challenged back and stood his ground. It was just as much a game between them as anything else. “I am not jumping in after you if you fall.”

“You’d let me drown?” Cocky bastard that he was, he had looked at Arthur with a smile tugging at his lips and shinning in his eyes and Arthur wanted to grab him by his golden hair and shake him until he stopped asking stupid questions and kiss him until the meaning of the word love really didn’t matter anymore.

“Yes. It would serve you right. You should try drowning – see how you like it.” Francis had swung his feet back and forth, like he was fidgeting, like he was bored, pursed his lips and seemed to consider Arthur’s suggestion.

“I did try it. Drowning. Granted – not like this.” He had looked over his shoulder at the waters below. Yes, not like that. “Do you think it’s different?”

“Drowning in the bloody Seine as opposed to drowning in your own blood?” Arthur had stepped next to Francis then. Had put his elbows on the ledge, close to Francis’ body, looked at the waters of the Seine below. “I think drowning in your own blood might be more painful. Maybe. You tell me, I haven’t tried it.”

Back when Francis had died, back when the human died and the _other_ took over - Arthur had been there. 

Arthur never asked Francis how his death had been like, because Arthur knew the other side of it, what it had been like to hold him in his arms while he was dying and while he came back. 

The truth between them was this - Arthur brought Francis back from the dead, Arthur turned Francis into a Vampire, because Arthur was greedy and possessive. Because Arthur couldn’t stand the idea of death taking away something he owned. 

And Francis never forgave him for it. 

Francis resented him for taking away his mortality, Francis resented him for stealing him away from Death, Francis hated sucking blood, Francis _this_ and Francis _that_. 

Francis refused to be with Arthur, but he also couldn’t stay away from him, so he came back into Arthur’s life in those moments in which he forgot he was supposed to be angry. He took human lovers and pretended to be mortal, until he couldn’t deceive them anymore and that’s where he ran back to Arthur to curse him and himself all over again.

In Arthur’s memory, they were in one of those rare moments in which Francis loved him without hating himself for it. So in that memory, Francis’s fingers had found Arthur’s, twined them together and then _pulled_ , pulled Arthur close to his body and enveloped him in his arms. Arthur had hugged him back, of course he had, had put his arms around Francis and tightened them with the intent to smother him and smother away thoughts and memories and years and feelings.

There were always people in Paris, there were always people around, but if anyone saw them Arthur didn’t care, couldn’t care, never cared. Hadn’t, never would, couldn’t, wouldn’t.

So he had kissed Francis like he had wanted to kiss him since he bloody fool sat on the ledge of the damned bridge, kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until his mouth hurt.

“I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.” he had said between kisses, _love you_ echoed between them, and Francis had laughed against his mouth. So Arthur had sat up on his toes, had used the bulk of his weight to push forward, until Francis tipped and fell, and Arthur fell right along side him.

The water of the Seine had been smelly and cold and just awful, and they had gasped and shivered, teeth clattering and lips blue when they had emerged. They hadn’t talked about it afterwards, they didn’t say much to each other for days afterwards, but they had gasped and moaned against each other in bed and when they weren’t busy re-learning each other’s bodies again and again and again, Francis looked at him with the sort of baffled, reverent wonder that was usually reserved for pilgrims that saw the Sistine Chapel for the first time. 

That sort of reverence was close to blasphemous and certainly it wasn’t wise to look at another person like that.

But Francis was never wise, and Arthur had always been just as much – if not more – of a fool.

Arthur was Arthur and he always took Francis back, because he never really had any idea how to be without him and there was no way…

There was no way -

Not then, not at the beginning, not after, not when they were together and not when they were apart –

There was no way for him to say that he loved Francis, because the words just got stuck in his throat and left him croaking. There was no way a word that was comprised of 4 letters and had an entry in the dictionary and a proper printed definition would ever be able to name the ties that bound them.

***

The thing about love – _love_ –

Love.

Being in love. I love you. Falling in love.

What did that sort of thing even mean?

No one had bothered to tell Arthur, and by the time he became familiar with the concept, he dismissed it as some stupid, childish flight of fancy.

Which it was.

Love was this stupid, childish flight of fancy, a word that tumbled off the tongue of young men, not for someone as old as Arthur. 

***

Arthur had been born before the Romans started laying rocks on the place they would Londinium. He had been born with rage, hunger and want already burning inside of him, lighting him up like a beacon for the vampire that lurked at the edges of his village. 

It wasn’t fair that Arthur couldn’t remember the face of his father, but he remembered the face of the woman that turned him - she had been sharp and hard, with green eyes that burned through the darkness of the night. Serpentine and deadly.

“I know you,” she said to him, with a voice like that lilt of bells, “Stubborn, angry, little child that you are.” She laughed and Arthur had felt the danger of him, but he held on to his spear and refused to cower.

“You don’t know me. I don’t care what you think you know, you don’t know...” 

“But I _do._ ” She came so close to him, “I know you, I felt the smell of your blood and I can already feel the taste of it on my tongue.” She was so fast, and she grabbed him by the back of head and pulled him closer, “You know, I can smell people - most of them are a worthless bunch of sad souls that deserve to be my next meal, but you smell like rage and ambition. And I want to give you a gift.” 

A _gift_ \- and Arthur had never squandered it, Arthur had embraced, Arthur has thrived in the shadows.

He was greedy and covetous, and his sire had given him the power to take whatever he wanted, but it was never enough. Arthur had always been hungry for something that he could never name, craved things that were beyond his grasp. Arthur took and took and took, and he was never satisfied, but....

***

The first time they met, Arthur was already _old_ and the smell of Francis’s blood was enough to make him weak in the knees. He felt him through the streets of Paris, the scent of him cutting through all the other thick odors, Arthur’s tongue already trying to imagine the taste of him. He was pulled to him because he wanted to drown in the scent of him.

He followed him throught the streets until he saw him – all golden hair and gem-blue eyes, smelling so deceptively _inviting_.

Like one taste of him could soothe the burning in Arthur’s throat.

Arthur wanted to drink him in, he wanted to press his fangs into this golden man’s throat and drain him of blood. He wanted to steal him away and keep him somewhere safe, so that only Arthur himself could ever look at him, touch him, taste him.

Of course, it had failed spectacularly – Arthur turned Francis into a vampire with the intent of having a mate, a partner, someone that would be _his._

Instead, he turned Francis into a vampire and the other had been horrified, angry and resentful and spiteful, Francis could be as cruel as he was beautiful. He ran to the edges of the Earth and forced Arthur to wait for him until he was ready to come back. He was capricious and prone to mood swings, fell into fits of self-loathing and that’s when he lashed out to destroy the things in his path – he was too selfish to step out into the Sun, so he settled for then next best thing, which were usually the helpless things and people that surrounded him. Despite all the people that died because Arthur fed from them, he sometimes wondered if his greatest sin wasn’t Francis himself, Francis and Arthur’s helplessness against his magnetism, Francis and the way he relished in his own cruelty.

But when Francis was good – when he was happy and content and willing to let Arthur in –

Arthur had always envisioned himself like a drifter in sea, someone that was lost through the currents of storm far away from land. 

***

When you lived as long as Arthur had, you were bound to be a witness of history, whether you searched for it or not.

Point in case – Arthur remembered when the streets of Florence had been alive with the blood of the Renaissance, he remembered how it was snuffed away from them by the plague, he remembered how fascinated he had been by the art, the music, the _research_. Then, ten years passed, twenty, thirty, forty. A century passed, and another.

Arthur remembered seeing the _Primavera_ when it was unfinished egg tempera on a wooden panel that Sandro Botticelli was working on, he remembered seeing in the Villa di Castello in 1670, when Botticelli was long dead. He saw it with Francis once when they had visited Italy together in 1898, and then again in 1934 when he had been alone, angry and smelling the scent of upcoming war brewing in the air.

In October 1978, Francis and Arthur were together again, they were riding high on one of those legendary good periods. Because it was easy to be around Francis when he was warm and loving, Arthur took him on a summer-long trip through Italy because why not? They were both old and bored and they liked looking at pretty things and each other.

In the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Francis stopped in front of the _Primavera_ with a frown between his brows. He cocked his head to the side and huffed, moody and unhappy.

“You know, I can never decide whether I like this or not. I always try to remember – what did I think about it the last time I saw it? Sometimes I remember, but…”

Francis turned around sharply, without saying anything at all. He started walking down the corridor and Arthur rushed out after him. When he finally caught up with him, they were in the Piazza della Signoria and the evening dark, cold and foggy.

It was always full of people in Florence, but Arthur knew how to look for Francis – the scent of him still cut through all the noise, the stillness of his body and the lines of his face were so familiar to Arthur that even if he forgot everything else, he’d still remember Francis.

“Arthur, do you remember that I used to have a wife once?” He asked, and he didn’t look at Arthur, but Arthur looked at him.

“Yes, a wife. Pretty little thing she was.” That had been before – before Arthur saw him, before Arthur decided he wanted him, before Arthur stole him again.

“Do you know – sometimes I try to remember her face, or the sound of her voice and I can’t. I can’t remember her. There’s so many things I…”

There was a pause, a hitch in his voice. He turned towards Arthur with his eyes fever-bright and the sharp tips of his fangs glinting from between his smirking lips..

“But I always remember you. I can never forget a single thing about you.”


End file.
